Soviet Union Sore Knuckles: Harsh words from Gorbachev

Harsh words from Gorbachev

Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev was in a no-nonsense mood last week as he addressed an audience of his country's top political, industrial and < scientific leaders at Communist Party headquarters a few blocks from the Kremlin. The General Secretary continued the haranguing of the slipshod Soviet economy that he has made his theme since he took office last March. This time, though, Gorbachev went a good deal further. As aging apparatchiks, most of them the appointees of the late Leonid Brezhnev, shifted uncomfortably in their seats, he singled out members of the Soviet bureaucracy by name to deliver a remarkable tongue...